


Moss And Crumbling Mortar

by Red_Cheshire



Category: Original Fairytale - Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Abandonment, Background Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Hinted child death, Long history, Old Death, Sentient Castle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 05:51:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6411415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Cheshire/pseuds/Red_Cheshire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No more voices chattered. No footsteps clicked and stomped. No laughter rung within its halls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moss And Crumbling Mortar

Shattered stonework, crumbling mortar and splintered wooden furniture. Windows filled with grimy, clouded glass or nought but broken shards of coloured glass. Worn, moth eaten, once heavy curtains fluttered in the breeze. Pale moonlight made motes of swirling dust glow like silver.

There were no people here. No master. No servants. No grand lady. No children laughing in the halls.

The corridors were empty and dark. Torches that once shone brightly had long since burnt to cinders and ashes. Once great tapestries were no more than faded, rotting lengths of fabric hanging loose from the walls, some not even that, and were lumpy piles of dirt covered, rotten cloth.

The mistress had spent hours upon hours of empty time and rainy days sewing stories into framed cloth, but now her time and artful kindness meant nothing.

The great hall, where lords had gathered and feasted, where the master had held court, where foreign dignitaries bedecked in gold and silks had once gathered, which was once a place of gilded opulence, was as wrecked and ruined as everything around it. Gold had tarnished from filth and neglect. The chandelier had fallen and shattered, the cable that once held it high worn away by ages. Candles had long since crumbled to dust.

The master had been a scholar. His library had been the finest in the land, filled wall to wall with thick books and parchment scrolls. Knowledge had been his greatest treasure. But time and dank had consumed the library as thoroughly as the mice and rats. The master would have been heartbroken at the loss.

Old furniture was worn away by dankness, fractured and broken. The thick cobwebs of spiders and the omnipresent, inescapable, choking layer of dust covered everything.

Wooden toys of children lay rotting and abandoned.

A music box, once owned by the mistress, lay shattered on crumbling stone steps. She never had the chance to gift it to her child.

No more voices chattered. No footsteps clicked and stomped. No laughter rung within its halls.

The absence was an open, painful wound.

The only sound was the wind that rattled through broken windows, bringing with it the detestable patter of approaching rain.

The castle wept.


End file.
